Successful salespeople need to have three characteristics: business intelligence (good IQ), the ability to create trust and rapport on a personal level (good EQ), and a good structure and methodology to the sales discussion (good execution, or XQ).
Lessons from the Master
Mike McCue.
Sales and Marketing Management. New York:
Mar/Apr 2008. Vol. 160, Iss. 2; p. 20
Showing posts with label Sales management. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sales management. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Sales - HBR Articles - 2006
Sales
Better Sales Networks
Tuba Üstüner and David Godes
July–August
Reprint R0607H
Give Me That Old-Time Motivation
Walter A. Friedman
Forethought, July–August
Reprint F0607E
How Right Should the Customer Be?
Erin Anderson and
Vincent Onyemah
July–August
Reprint R0607D ♦ OnPoint 1001;
OnPoint collection "Supercharge
Your Sales Force" 1005
Leveraging the Psychology of the Salesperson
A conversation with psychologist and
anthropologist G. Clotaire Rapaille
Diane Coutu
July-August
Reprint R0607B
Love Your Customers
A conversation with Joe Girard
M. Ellen Peebles
Forethought, July-August
Reprint F0607F
Low-Pressure Selling
Edward C. Bursk
July-August
Originally published in 1947
Reprint R0607M
Major Sales: Who Really Does the Buying?
Thomas V. Bonoma
July–August
Originally published in 1982
R0607P ♦ OnPoint 1004
Making the Major Sale
Benson P. Shapiro and
Ronald S. Posner
July–August
Originally published in 1976
Reprint R0607L
Match Your Sales Force Structure to Your Business Life Cycle
Andris A. Zoltners, Prabhakant
Sinha, and Sally E. Lorimer
July–August
Reprint R0607F
The New Science of Sales Force Productivity
Dianne Ledingham, Mark Kovac,
and Heidi Locke Simon
September
Reprint R0609H
The Sales Learning Curve
Mark Leslie and
Charles A. Holloway
July-August
Reprint R0607J ♦ OnPoint 1003;
OnPoint collection "Get Your
Innovations to Market - and
Keep Them There" 1006
Sales Reps' Biggest Mistakes
Tom Atkinson and Ron Koprowski
Forethought, July–August
Reprint F0607C
Selling the Sales Force on Automation
Mark Cotteleer, Edward
Inderrieden, and Felissa Lee
Forethought, July-August
Reprint F0607B
Understanding What Your Sales Manager Is Up Against
Barry Trailer and Jim Dickie
July–August
Reprint R0607C
What Makes a Good Salesman
David Mayer and
Herbert M. Greenberg
July–August
Originally published in 1964
Reprint R0607N
Better Sales Networks
Tuba Üstüner and David Godes
July–August
Reprint R0607H
Give Me That Old-Time Motivation
Walter A. Friedman
Forethought, July–August
Reprint F0607E
How Right Should the Customer Be?
Erin Anderson and
Vincent Onyemah
July–August
Reprint R0607D ♦ OnPoint 1001;
OnPoint collection "Supercharge
Your Sales Force" 1005
Leveraging the Psychology of the Salesperson
A conversation with psychologist and
anthropologist G. Clotaire Rapaille
Diane Coutu
July-August
Reprint R0607B
Love Your Customers
A conversation with Joe Girard
M. Ellen Peebles
Forethought, July-August
Reprint F0607F
Low-Pressure Selling
Edward C. Bursk
July-August
Originally published in 1947
Reprint R0607M
Major Sales: Who Really Does the Buying?
Thomas V. Bonoma
July–August
Originally published in 1982
R0607P ♦ OnPoint 1004
Making the Major Sale
Benson P. Shapiro and
Ronald S. Posner
July–August
Originally published in 1976
Reprint R0607L
Match Your Sales Force Structure to Your Business Life Cycle
Andris A. Zoltners, Prabhakant
Sinha, and Sally E. Lorimer
July–August
Reprint R0607F
The New Science of Sales Force Productivity
Dianne Ledingham, Mark Kovac,
and Heidi Locke Simon
September
Reprint R0609H
The Sales Learning Curve
Mark Leslie and
Charles A. Holloway
July-August
Reprint R0607J ♦ OnPoint 1003;
OnPoint collection "Get Your
Innovations to Market - and
Keep Them There" 1006
Sales Reps' Biggest Mistakes
Tom Atkinson and Ron Koprowski
Forethought, July–August
Reprint F0607C
Selling the Sales Force on Automation
Mark Cotteleer, Edward
Inderrieden, and Felissa Lee
Forethought, July-August
Reprint F0607B
Understanding What Your Sales Manager Is Up Against
Barry Trailer and Jim Dickie
July–August
Reprint R0607C
What Makes a Good Salesman
David Mayer and
Herbert M. Greenberg
July–August
Originally published in 1964
Reprint R0607N
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
The Right Way to Manage Unprofitable Customers
The Right Way to Manage Unprofitable Customers.
By: Mittal, Vikas, Sarkees, Matthew, Murshed, Feisal,
Harvard Business Review,
April 2008, Vol. 86, Issue 4
Customer divestment, whereby a company stops providing a product or service to an existing customer, was once considered an anomaly. However, it is fast becoming a viable strategic option for many organizations.
customer retention imperative is there, but some firms are taking advantage of new segmentation approaches and technologies that have made it easier to focus on retaining the right customers – those who will bring in the most revenue over time – and, by extension, to show problem customers the door.
Our research identified four common reasons why businesses terminate relationships with end users: the declining profitability of specific customers, the lower productivity of employees as they deal with unprofitable customers, changes in the capacity to serve large volumes of customers, and shifts in a company's business strategy.
Authors recommend five stage process for terminating relationships with unprofitable customers
REASSESS
Do we truly know why this customer seems to be unprofitable? Has buying decreased because of an unwillingness – or an inability – to spend, for example?
EDUCATE THE CUSTOMER
Share the company's perspective with customers.
RENEGOTIATE
Renegotiate the value proposition to achieve mutual benefits for the company and the customer.
MIGRATE
Move the customer to a new provider (a partner or a competitor), channel, or form of payment.
TERMINATE
Discontinue the relationship with the customer.
By: Mittal, Vikas, Sarkees, Matthew, Murshed, Feisal,
Harvard Business Review,
April 2008, Vol. 86, Issue 4
Customer divestment, whereby a company stops providing a product or service to an existing customer, was once considered an anomaly. However, it is fast becoming a viable strategic option for many organizations.
customer retention imperative is there, but some firms are taking advantage of new segmentation approaches and technologies that have made it easier to focus on retaining the right customers – those who will bring in the most revenue over time – and, by extension, to show problem customers the door.
Our research identified four common reasons why businesses terminate relationships with end users: the declining profitability of specific customers, the lower productivity of employees as they deal with unprofitable customers, changes in the capacity to serve large volumes of customers, and shifts in a company's business strategy.
Authors recommend five stage process for terminating relationships with unprofitable customers
REASSESS
Do we truly know why this customer seems to be unprofitable? Has buying decreased because of an unwillingness – or an inability – to spend, for example?
EDUCATE THE CUSTOMER
Share the company's perspective with customers.
RENEGOTIATE
Renegotiate the value proposition to achieve mutual benefits for the company and the customer.
MIGRATE
Move the customer to a new provider (a partner or a competitor), channel, or form of payment.
TERMINATE
Discontinue the relationship with the customer.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Global Accout Management - Pitfalls
Can selling be globalized? The pitfalls of global account management
David Arnold, Julian Birkinshaw, Omar Toulan.
California Management Review. Berkeley:
Fall 2001. Vol. 44, Iss. 1; pg. 8, 15 pgs
There is a strong current trend towards globalization of the sales function, driven by increasing customer power, initiatives in customer relationship management, and the design of customer-centric organizations.
This article reports on a two-year research project examining the approaches taken by sixteen large multinational companies in developing global account management structures.
The research was conducted in two stages. Stage one involved face-toface interviews with 35 managers in ten companies-typically a mixture of global account managers, national sales managers, and executives responsible for overseeing global account organizations. Stage two involved sending questionnaires to the same three groups of people in sixteen companies, resulting in 107 completed questionnaires from global account managers, 55 from national sales managers, and 10 from executives responsible for overseeing the global account organization in their company. The perspectives of the national sales managers provide for a comparison between global accounts and non-global accounts.
In terms of the price of goods sold, the Global group experienced .much lower" or "slightly lower" prices, whereas the Non-Global group indicated "no change" in prices. In other words, the price erosion appeared to be significantly worse in the global accounts than in the non-global accounts.
In our field research, the more successful global account relationships were almost all ones that had been initiated by the vendor for strategic reasons. Their motivation for doing so, of course, was to increase their share of the customer's business, either through guaranteed minimum levels of business or through account penetration in country-markets where the share of the customer's business had been low because of local factors. However, this objective only proved achievable if there was a strategic logic behind the partnership, such as the development of innovative or customized offerings that benefited both parties.
Five prescriptions (lessons learnt during research) for buidling global account management function
1. Clarify the role of the global account management team
2. Make incentive structure realistic for both global team and national team members.
3. Pick the right global account managers, not just super-salesmen and train them in global account management philosophy and practices
4. Create a strong support network-Global account managers need a strong support network. They need mentors back at head office, they need information systems and communication materials to broadcast their activities, and they need regular meetings with each other at which they can compare notes and swap war stories.
5. Makes sure the customer relationship operates at more than one level-Support at the senior executive level usually gets established quite quickly. What usually gets neglected is the establishment of relationships underneath the global account manager.
Further reading on global account management and the antecedent literature on key account management,
M. McDonald, T. Millman, and B. Rogers, "Key Account Management: Theory, Practice and Challenges," Journal of Marketing Management, 13 (1997): 737-757;
D.C. Weilbaker and W.A. Weeks, "The Evolution of National Account Management: A Literature Perspective, Journal of Personal Selling &Sales Management," 17/4 (Fall 1997);
G. Yip and T. Madsen, "Global Account Management: The New Frontier in Relationship Marketing," International Marketing Review, 13/3 (1996): 24-42;
J.M. Birkinshaw, 0. Toulan, and D. Arnold, "Global Account Management in Multinational Corporations: Theory and Evidence," Journal of International Business Studies, 32/2 (Second Quarter 2001): 231248; the special issue of Thexis, 4 (1999);
D.B. Montgomery and G.S. Yip, "The Challenge of Global Account Management," Marketing Management, 914 (Winter 2000): 22-29.
David Arnold is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Harvard Business School and course head of the International Marketing Management program. His research interests focus on international marketing organization, marketing in emerging markets, and global branding. His work has most recently been published in the Harvard Business Review and the Journal of International Business Studies.
Julian Birkinshaw is an Associate Professor of International and Strategic Management at the London Business School. His research focuses on entrepreneurship, knowledge management, and innovation within and between the units of multinational corporations. His most recent book is Entrepreneurship and the Global Firm (2000). He is also the author of numerous articles in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Organization Science, and other journals.
Omar Toulan is an Assistant Professor of Strategy at the Faculty of Management of McGill University. His research and teaching interests focus on two areas of international business: the structuring of inter-firm relationships in an international context; and the impact of market reform on firm behavior. He has published in Strategic Management Journal, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Industrial and Corporate Change, and the Journal of Latin American Studies.
David Arnold, Julian Birkinshaw, Omar Toulan.
California Management Review. Berkeley:
Fall 2001. Vol. 44, Iss. 1; pg. 8, 15 pgs
There is a strong current trend towards globalization of the sales function, driven by increasing customer power, initiatives in customer relationship management, and the design of customer-centric organizations.
This article reports on a two-year research project examining the approaches taken by sixteen large multinational companies in developing global account management structures.
The research was conducted in two stages. Stage one involved face-toface interviews with 35 managers in ten companies-typically a mixture of global account managers, national sales managers, and executives responsible for overseeing global account organizations. Stage two involved sending questionnaires to the same three groups of people in sixteen companies, resulting in 107 completed questionnaires from global account managers, 55 from national sales managers, and 10 from executives responsible for overseeing the global account organization in their company. The perspectives of the national sales managers provide for a comparison between global accounts and non-global accounts.
In terms of the price of goods sold, the Global group experienced .much lower" or "slightly lower" prices, whereas the Non-Global group indicated "no change" in prices. In other words, the price erosion appeared to be significantly worse in the global accounts than in the non-global accounts.
In our field research, the more successful global account relationships were almost all ones that had been initiated by the vendor for strategic reasons. Their motivation for doing so, of course, was to increase their share of the customer's business, either through guaranteed minimum levels of business or through account penetration in country-markets where the share of the customer's business had been low because of local factors. However, this objective only proved achievable if there was a strategic logic behind the partnership, such as the development of innovative or customized offerings that benefited both parties.
Five prescriptions (lessons learnt during research) for buidling global account management function
1. Clarify the role of the global account management team
2. Make incentive structure realistic for both global team and national team members.
3. Pick the right global account managers, not just super-salesmen and train them in global account management philosophy and practices
4. Create a strong support network-Global account managers need a strong support network. They need mentors back at head office, they need information systems and communication materials to broadcast their activities, and they need regular meetings with each other at which they can compare notes and swap war stories.
5. Makes sure the customer relationship operates at more than one level-Support at the senior executive level usually gets established quite quickly. What usually gets neglected is the establishment of relationships underneath the global account manager.
Further reading on global account management and the antecedent literature on key account management,
M. McDonald, T. Millman, and B. Rogers, "Key Account Management: Theory, Practice and Challenges," Journal of Marketing Management, 13 (1997): 737-757;
D.C. Weilbaker and W.A. Weeks, "The Evolution of National Account Management: A Literature Perspective, Journal of Personal Selling &Sales Management," 17/4 (Fall 1997);
G. Yip and T. Madsen, "Global Account Management: The New Frontier in Relationship Marketing," International Marketing Review, 13/3 (1996): 24-42;
J.M. Birkinshaw, 0. Toulan, and D. Arnold, "Global Account Management in Multinational Corporations: Theory and Evidence," Journal of International Business Studies, 32/2 (Second Quarter 2001): 231248; the special issue of Thexis, 4 (1999);
D.B. Montgomery and G.S. Yip, "The Challenge of Global Account Management," Marketing Management, 914 (Winter 2000): 22-29.
David Arnold is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Harvard Business School and course head of the International Marketing Management program. His research interests focus on international marketing organization, marketing in emerging markets, and global branding. His work has most recently been published in the Harvard Business Review and the Journal of International Business Studies.
Julian Birkinshaw is an Associate Professor of International and Strategic Management at the London Business School. His research focuses on entrepreneurship, knowledge management, and innovation within and between the units of multinational corporations. His most recent book is Entrepreneurship and the Global Firm (2000). He is also the author of numerous articles in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Organization Science, and other journals.
Omar Toulan is an Assistant Professor of Strategy at the Faculty of Management of McGill University. His research and teaching interests focus on two areas of international business: the structuring of inter-firm relationships in an international context; and the impact of market reform on firm behavior. He has published in Strategic Management Journal, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Industrial and Corporate Change, and the Journal of Latin American Studies.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
How Product Companies can Sell Services MORE Profitably
How to Sell Services MORE Profitably.
By: Reinartz, Werner, Ulaga, Wolfgang,
Harvard Business Review,
May2008, Vol. 86, Issue 5
Some interesting points
For every success story of a product company that sold valued added services profitably, at least five cautionary tales remind us that manufacturing companies will most likely struggle to turn a profit from their service businesses.
Over the past three years we have investigated how manufacturers in business markets can develop profitable services. We conducted in-depth studies of 20 industrial companies operating in a broad variety of product markets. We went on to have discussions with more than 500 B2B managers in a series of executive workshops; these complemented the insights from our interviews.
The Path to Profits in Industrial Services
1 Recognize That You Are Already a Service Company
2 Industrialize the Back Office
3 Create a Service-Savvy Sales Force
If companies are to move away from straightforward product-related services into more complex customer solutions, managers must take a new look at sales management strategies. Services require longer sales cycles, and the sales process is often more complex and strategic, meaning that decisions are made high up in the customer's hierarchy.
4 Focus on Customers' Processes
Werner Reinartz (werner.reinartz@uni-koeln.de) is a professor of marketing at the University of Cologne in Germany and an associate professor of marketing at Insead in Fontainebleau, France. Wolfgang Ulaga (ulaga@hec.fr) is an associate professor of marketing at HEC School of Management in Jouy-en-Josas, France.
By: Reinartz, Werner, Ulaga, Wolfgang,
Harvard Business Review,
May2008, Vol. 86, Issue 5
Some interesting points
For every success story of a product company that sold valued added services profitably, at least five cautionary tales remind us that manufacturing companies will most likely struggle to turn a profit from their service businesses.
Over the past three years we have investigated how manufacturers in business markets can develop profitable services. We conducted in-depth studies of 20 industrial companies operating in a broad variety of product markets. We went on to have discussions with more than 500 B2B managers in a series of executive workshops; these complemented the insights from our interviews.
The Path to Profits in Industrial Services
1 Recognize That You Are Already a Service Company
2 Industrialize the Back Office
3 Create a Service-Savvy Sales Force
If companies are to move away from straightforward product-related services into more complex customer solutions, managers must take a new look at sales management strategies. Services require longer sales cycles, and the sales process is often more complex and strategic, meaning that decisions are made high up in the customer's hierarchy.
4 Focus on Customers' Processes
Werner Reinartz (werner.reinartz@uni-koeln.de) is a professor of marketing at the University of Cologne in Germany and an associate professor of marketing at Insead in Fontainebleau, France. Wolfgang Ulaga (ulaga@hec.fr) is an associate professor of marketing at HEC School of Management in Jouy-en-Josas, France.
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